Sir, we would see Jesus, and, where is he that is born King of the Jews? – that was the cry in the first age, when the saviour first appeared upon the earth. And it has been the cry in every age, insofar as those who have heard of him want to see him. According to his promise, moreover, that he would be with his disciples to the end of the age, he is yet on earth today.
But how would we find him? Even more to the point, how would we recognise him if he was standing right before us? Many who claimed to be looking for him in the time of his first appearing failed to recognise him – that he was indeed the awaited messiah. His family failed to recognise him – his own brother James did not know him – not, that is, until he appeared to him having risen from the dead. That should give us pause. How would we know him if he appeared in our midst today? What should be expect? A man in a robe? (Of course there are plenty of those.) Or would that be an anachronism? Should we perhaps expect him to be dressed as he was then – in the common attire of the age? No doubt, many failed to recognise him because he was in many ways undistinguished from his peers. So, once more, how would we know him?
The answer, I suggest, lies in who he is, and according to scripture he is the Word. John 1 states that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Christ is the Word then – the whole Word and nothing but the Word – where the Word is the Word of God, the holy scriptures. But how does that help us? The internet is awash with claims of scriptural authority; all churches essentially claim as much – we have the Word, He is among us. Yet many of them contradict one another, showing many of the claims to be necessarily false, as Christ cannot contradict himself.
More accurate then it is to say that Christ is the prophetic Word – the Word of God to the age, the specific age in which he appears – and here we hark back to our earlier statement that God has his witness in every age. This is significant as, in his first coming, he was missed by those – notably the Pharisees – who referred to the Word of another age. They held to the teachings of Moses, and in the messiah perhaps they expected a Super Moses.
Similarly, when we look for him today, we cannot expect to find him in the doctrines of Martin Luther, of John Wesley, or in any other of the great Reformation creeds. That was manna for another age. And we cannot find him in Pentecostal doctrine – so far as the Pentecostal denominations are concerned. For this is another prophetic age – the age of the Word in its fullness, of the spiritual seed come to maturity. It is the age of Malachi 4 and Revelation 10. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord ... and ... in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished ... It is the age of the Word unveiled, in the words of St Paul, of seeing face to face – of the logos beheld, as one contemporary put it – and as Job also framed the matter, I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.
This we should look for in his appearing today.